FOR aspiring palaeontologist Emily Swaby, her future is rooted in the past.
Emily, from Sandygate, Wath-upon-Dearne, will be jetting off to Thermopolis, Wyoming to spend a month getting hands on at one of the world’s best dinosaur dig sites, the Morrison Formation.
Then in September, she will begin her MPhil in Palaeontology at the University of Manchester, working alongside leading expert Dr Dean Lomax in a project about a species of ancient marine reptile, the ichthyosaur.
For 21-year-old Emily, it is the realisation of a young dream and the reason she has been nominated as a Young Adventurer in the Young Champions awards.
Emily, who is currently in her final year of study at the University of Portsmouth, said: “I’ve now raised enough with the help of my family and friends to go to America so we have booked the flights, which is really exciting.
“I have been speaking to the staff at the Wyoming Dinosaur Centre, where I will be based, and they have been so welcoming and helpful in sorting everything out.
“I will be helping in the museum and then will have the chance to go out to some of the dig sites out in the outback, with hardly anyone out there.
“We will be out most of the day and helping excavate, which is the bit I’m looking forward to the most. They also do dig site programmes with members of the public so I will have the chance to explain some of this stuff to them too.”
Emily’s Masters project working alongside Dean will bring her full circle from when she first met him, while on work experience at Doncaster Museum.
“The marine reptile I will be studying, Temnodontosaurus crassimanus, is one of the largest ichthyosaurs from the Lower Jurassic age. But although displayed within the collections of the Yorkshire Museum and Art Gallery, the holotype specimen of T crassimanus has not been studied in detail since 1930. So my MPhil study will include the re-examination of the holotype skeleton and examine other examples of the species present in museum collections, including in Germany.
“Dean is the world’s leading specialist in ichthyosaurs so I’ll be doing it alongside the best in the field.
“It is a really exciting year ahead. Coming to the end of time at Portsmouth I was looking ahead to that next step and everything seems to have fallen into place. I’m doing what I love and that’s a great thing.”
Emily’s grandpa Tony Swaby said: “Throughout her time at Portsmouth, Emily has repeatedly achieved top marks in all of her subjects. This wasn’t by chance or fluke, it was because from the outset she committed herself 100 per cent to her studies, painstakingly working hard in an effort to succeed in a subject that has always been very close to her heart.
“Unearthing and studying the world’s finest remains of dinosaur fossils in Wyoming, USA, is a lifetime opportunity for her and one which I know Emily will grasp with both hands. In my eyes she is already successful, a true epitome of a ‘local lass makes good’ story.”
